


My Baby Says A Lot Of Things

by Barkour



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Future Fic, Love Confessions, M/M, Shut Up Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7377991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At a celebration thrown in thanks for Voltron, Keith and Lance have a very serious discussion about a number of miscommunications in their friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Baby Says A Lot Of Things

**Author's Note:**

> Background Allura/Shiro, Shay/Hunk.

Lance cut around the bulk of the celebratory crowd and returned to the team in high spirits. He felt as if he had grown another three inches. The great room of the old temple glittered with spun glass thread, and the heat of all the bodies in this space engulfed him. He was hot and sweaty, and happy as well, this an exciting new addition to the hot and sweaty situation.

"There you guys are," said Lance, to no welcome. 

Pidge had her electronics. Shiro had gone off to stand with Allura before the alien council. Keith was smiling as he spoke with Hunk. The smiling made a little fold at the corner of each of his eyes. He'd no dimples, but the exposed line of his throat looked especially sleek. Keith laughed at some dumb joke Hunk made. Some of Lance's happiness dimmed. 

"Ahem!" said Lance. "If I could have everyone's attention please!"

Pidge did not look up from her Altean space tablet.

"Except Pidge," he said, "as she is still recovering from her heroics."

Even at this generous admission, Pidge did not lift her head but only her arm in its fancy high tech cast with the blinking buttons and everything. Allura had forbade Pidge from fiddling with the cast; Pidge agreed only on the grounds she was permitted to dissect it as soon as the bone had healed.

"What is it?" asked Keith, at last deigning to turn from Hunk. His left brow was arched. He continued to smile. Oh, the mocking bastard, thought Lance. This news ought to put the jerk back.

"I," said Lance, posing with a hand at his chest and his feet widespread, "have now kissed an alien girl before any of you!"

Hunk showed his appreciation by slurping down the rest of his soupy drink. His eyes crossed as he frowned down at it. 

"Wow," said Pidge, still tapping away at her tablet. "How cool."

"Sarcasm is unappreciated, Holt," said Lance, "this is the first step into an entirely new realm of diplomatic relations for Earth. Get it? Relations!" He laughed.

"Besides," said Pidge, "didn't Hunk kiss Shay?"

Hunk choked on his drink slash soup slash sludge mixture. 

"That's not-- No! We're just friends. She's a beautiful, kind-hearted rock alien--"

Keith was frowning now at Lance. It beetled his eyebrows and made his jaw stick out. Lance preened. A surliness knotted Keith's jutting jaw. Keith said, "Shiro kissed Allura." 

Pidge lifted her head. "He did?"

They all, but for Hunk, still sputtering, turned to look at the council. Allura, her white hair loosed, stood smiling pleasantly at the dignitaries. Her hand was rested on Shiro's clothed metal arm, and his head was turned from them, his face unseen but given to Allura.

Lance said, "No way! Like, on her hand? That chivalrous jerk!"

"On the flight deck," Keith added. "After we rescued her. On the _mouth_ ," he said loudly, glaring at Lance.

"--and I am grateful to her, for her friendship," said Hunk, now sweating, "but it just, I mean, we have so much stuff to do, how could I justify taking trips to see Shay?"

"Hunk, shut up about your girlfriend," snapped Lance. He ignored Hunk's cry of "She's not my girlfriend!"

Lance jabbed two fingers at Keith. "Are you saying I didn't just kiss a smoking hot alien babe on the lips?"

"I'm saying they don't have lips," said Keith. 

"He's right, they don't," said Pidge. She brightened. The nerd in her came out. "Linguistics isn't my thing, but it's kinda cool how they've got so many consonant sounds in their language when they don't even--"

"Oh, we kissed," said Lance loudly, "we kissed real good. We kissed all over each other's faces. Right on the mouth, too." 

He gestured at Keith's face with a finger then poked him in the harsh-drawn cheek. Keith, his shoulders high and set wide, swatted at his hand.

"Oh, hey," said Hunk, "Pidge, wow, Coran is totally waving at us. I think we should go over to him right now immediately?"

"But I'm almost finished with the reconstruction," she complained. Hunk hefted her up in his arms and bolted. Good riddance; they didn't need casualties. Lance was going for blood this time. 

"Well, I hope you had fun," said Keith, "since that was your first kiss."

"With an alien space babe!" said Lance. "I've kissed girls before! I've kissed so many girls before!"

"Oh, yeah?" said Keith. He swatted at Lance's hand again. "Good for you!"

Lance sneered. "I bet I've kissed more girls than you."

Keith reddened duskily. "I've kissed people before!"

"How many? One? Two? You know," said Lance, folding his arms and smirking, "your reflection doesn't count."

Keith scoffed. He folded his arms too. His jaw had dropped; now he glared up at Lance through his eyelashes. Just looking at Keith's eyelashes made Lance's gut burn, never mind the dark and (some might say) stormy gleam of his eyes. 

Lance squared his jaw, a jaw his mother claimed could never be squared. He met Keith's gaze with equal heat.

Abruptly, Keith looked away. His shoulders flattened. His arms fell away. 

"Whatever," he said. He made to turn from Lance.

Lance lunged to grab Keith's shoulder. "What? Too embarrassed to admit I'm right?"

"Let go," Keith snarled. He shrugged hard but Lance only grabbed his biceps instead. The muscle went taut under Lance's fingers, taut and leanly made.

"I bet you've never kissed anyone," said Lance. "I bet you're jealous."

"I'm not jealous!"

"You're mad that I got to kiss someone," Lance said, enjoying how Keith's ears reddened like his face, "and that means I did something you didn't do, ha! How's it feel, Keith? Knowing that these lips got all fresh and friendly with someone else?"

Keith stared at him. Lance basked in Keith's attention: the fierceness of his gaze, the way the muscle twitched under Lance's hand, how Keith's eyes dropped then his lips firmed and he looked up at Lance again.

"Fine," said Keith. "You want to do this? Fine. Okay."

And he fisted the front of Lance's new formal Altean robe. Lance thought: This is it, Keith's going to pop me in the face and I deserve it, I finally did it, I talked too much shit and now he's going to break my nose and I'm going to be ugly forever.

All Keith did was yank Lance behind him across the little distance to a small doorway that let out into one of the temple's darker, cooler hallways. Lance, now some four or five inches taller, had to stagger to keep upright. The celebrating guests jumped out of the way; one or two looked oddly at them as they passed.

The hallway was twisting and unlit but for a few phosphorescent sconces set at far intervals in the alcoves, and it was empty of anyone else.

"Oh, hey," said Lance nervously, "I think we should stay in the, uh, big room, there's way more witnesses there, to see me kick your ass!"

"I don't want witnesses," said Keith. He shoved Lance into the wall, just beside the entryway. He was staring low on Lance's face again. 

Heat surged again in Lance's chest. Maybe he didn't want to be ugly, but Ximena Borrego y Garcia and Graziela Sanchez raised no cowards. Lance said, "If you kill me, I will haunt you every day of the rest of your life."

Keith said, "Look, just shut up! This is already hard for me."

"Yes!" said Lance. "Killing people should be hard! Morally! Leave my face alone, I put too much work into my skin to mess it up."

"What is the stuff you use?" said Keith. "You always smell like flowers."

"Oh," said Lance. "Well, if you're interested, I can hook you up with a couple sample size--"

Keith groaned, rolled his eyes, and kissed Lance on the mouth, on his lips, on the face. Lance's lower lip was pinched uncomfortably between their teeth. He would have told Keith what a bad idea it was to kiss someone while they were talking but Keith had kissed him while they were talking and so Lance could not tell him this. Keith's eyes were scrunched shut. His nose had wrinkled on the bridge, his brow made a knot. Lance's heart made violent motions. His breath came shallowly. 

There was no artistry to Keith's kiss, nothing to make sense of it. Then Keith, with careful slowness, moved his lips to pull on Lance's woe begotten lower lip, and the tip of his tongue was shy and his lips were rough and warm, and Lance had what his abuelita would have called, in hushed whispers, a communion with God.

Keith, eyes still closed like a kid afraid of the dark, brought a hand up to touch Lance's jaw. In doing this, he half-slapped Lance. It knocked them both out of the kiss.

Lance stared at him. Keith's eyelashes flew up. A mottling color clutched his throat. Lance opened his mouth to say one thing but said, indignant,

"What was that?" said Lance. "I knew you were going to beat me up!"

"I didn't mean to," Keith snapped. 

"First you accuse me of lying," said Lance, his voice raising, "then you drag me away from witnesses, then you kiss me, then you assault me--"

Keith kissed him again. Lance managed to eke out a long mmmph sound against Keith's lips. Keith had surprisingly soft lips and he did not know how to use them. Lance, who had kissed four people in a romantical manner in his life, should have felt proud about this. Instead he gasped and clutched at Keith's side. 

Keith's mouth was hot and slick. He made a startled, bird-like noise when Lance licked at his tongue. Then his hand slipped around to grasp Lance by the nape, and he looped two fingers of the other hand in a belt loop at Lance's hip. The weight of his palm, bared in the Altean tradition, was a burning stone on Lance's neck.

They parted again. Lance rolled his tongue on his teeth and swallowed. His heart was jittering very loudly in his chest. Keith's lips were wet and shining. He looked flickeringly at Lance, to his eyes then down again to his lips; then, his brow firming, Keith met Lance's gaze again. He'd a defensive look.

Lance said, "You--"

Another kiss, fiercer. Keith kissed without elegance and as if he intended to devour Lance. It occurred to Lance at this moment, as Keith bit hugely at Lance's mouth and lips and tongue, that he may have misunderstood a couple of things vis-à-vis Keith constantly glowering at Lance. 

They broke apart. Lance had a hand palming Keith's butt. The other hand was flat against Keith's chest, pushing him back.

Keith breathed heavily. He said, low and made rasping, "What? What is it, Lance?" His eyes were bright somehow even in the dim light.

Lance said, "I," and couldn't think of what else to say.

Keith smoothed his hand from Lance's nape, slowly along the side of his throat and down to mirror the positioning of Lance's hand, palm flat to Lance's breast.

Very intensely, without ever blinking, Keith said, "So, do it. Whatever you're going to do. Say I'm trying to trick you. Or that I'm a, a jerk. We're rivals, right?"

Lance stared at him. He said, "Keith. Buddy..."

"Oh, I'm your buddy now?" 

Keith's nostrils flared. Lance had a sensation of free-falling, and it made his stomach turn over. Keith was looking at him not like someone who wanted to be better than Lance. Rather he looked at Lance as if he wanted: what? For Lance to like him. For Lance to--

Want him, thought Lance. Want him. I want him, he thought with some surprise that was perhaps undeserved given his fingers were digging into Keith's butt.

Keith dropped his hands. He shook out of Lance's grip. "Whatever," he said. "Forget it."

"Oh, my God," said Lance, beginning, widely, to smile, "you like me. You like me!"

"I said forget it!" 

Keith rounded on him. Lance was delighted to see Keith reddening again, even his ears getting in on the action. 

"Holy crap!" said Lance. "You do like me! What!"

Keith snapped, "If you're just going to be an asshole about it--"

"Why didn't you say something?" Lance yelled. "I thought you hated me!"

"I did say something!" Keith shouted back. "Eight months ago! When we were stuck together on that planet after Zarkon!"

"I don't remember that," said Lance. "I don't remember you saying that." 

He did, in fact, remember. They'd been camping outside between Blue and Red, eating fire-roasted space lizard and trying to map the stars. Lance had said, "Imagine if we're stuck with just each other, forever," and Keith had said, "Well. I like you," and Lance had accused Keith of angling for more of the lizard legs.

"That was your confession?" said Lance. "While we were eating _space lizard?_ It had twelve legs! Keith! You can't confess to someone while you're sharing a twelve-legged space lizard!" 

"And then you go make out with someone else," Keith yelled, "and rub it in my face! Like I didn't spill my guts to you!"

Lance threw his hands in the air. His fingers whacked the ceiling. "You spilled no guts! When did you spill your guts!"

"I said I liked you!"

"That is not spilling your guts!" Lance bellowed. "Spilling your guts would be like if I said, you never pay attention to me, the most attention you ever gave me is when we were stuck together, and as soon as the team got back together you forgot about me all over again!" Keith stared at Lance and Lance added, unable to stop, "You were laughing at Hunk's jokes 'cause you'd rather hang out with Hunk than me!"

Keith grabbed Lance by the lapels and hauled him in for another kiss. He was improving very rapidly, Lance noted. Lance grabbed at Keith's back and walked him backwards against the opposite wall. They scrambled at one another, Keith pulling and shoving at Lance, Lance trying his damnedest to get a decent angle on Keith's mouth.

"I was laughing at Hunk's joke because it was funny," Keith argued.

"Stop talking, I'm trying to kiss you," said Lance, "you don't have a monopoly on shut up kisses, I can do them too, and _put a little boogie in it_ has never been funny in a hundred thousand eternities."

He finally got a good angle, tipping Keith's face up and turning his cheek just so. It was a good kiss, if Lance said so, and if anyone asked he would indeed say so; it was the sort of kiss you'd see in one of Mama Graziela's old black and white movies, a melting kiss, a kiss like the world was spinning and the juncture of their selves was the axis upon which it spun.

Their lips parted. A wetness tied them to each other. His breath hot, his voice harshened and his nose wrinkled, Keith said, "That doesn't make sense. Eternities don't end."

Lance said, "Will you just shut up and kiss me," and Keith said, "Coming from you? That's hilarious," and Lance said, "Bleh bleh bleh, I'm Keith and I never listen to anything Lance says even though he's always right," and Keith cupped Lance's face in his bare, rough hands and leaned up with his lips parted and his breath soft to kiss him all over again. 

Of all the kisses Lance had that day, that one was the best.


End file.
